Perhaps they had simply migrated elsewhere

[Interviewer:] You yourself are an avid hiker and explorer. These are moments when you contemplate what ties us to the territories we traverse, their myths and legends, their wondrous and unsettling creatures. Is your book born of an attempt to connect these two universes that dwell within you: the ultra-contemporary digital world of design and innovation, and that of past myths?

[Nova:] Indeed, while I’ve done a lot of work on digital technology, in recent years I’ve turned my attention to studying our ways of relating to the world, taking the Alps or the environmental crisis as my subjects. As an anthropologist, this is observational work. In fact, the book’s hypothesis, that “the wondrous creatures now make their homes in our machines”, came directly from a conversation in the Alps, where someone told me such entities had vanished from the mountains. To which I replied, perhaps they had simply migrated elsewhere.

What interests me is studying a kind of contemporary folklore that helps us grasp both our tools and the world we inhabit. For me, these are different domains: transformed territories, such as the Alps, and those of digital technology. I don’t want to draw a line between these worlds – there are continuities that connect them, shared beliefs that sustain our collective imagination. — Nicolas Nova & Maxence Grugier, “On the stubborn persistance of digital wonder” (2025)

Why post this?¹ My machine-assisted translation of a Fisheye Immersive interview with Nicolas Nova, published posthumously, about his new book.² Only now am I coming to fully appreciate how his recent, book-length works, untranslated from the original French, represent missing pieces of my own research puzzle.

As established disciplines and knowledge systems fragment and calcify, Nova’s careful methods and enduring preoccupations assume fresh resonance. His emphasis on systematic observation, attention to vernacular knowledge and practices, things both quotidian³ and anomalous, compilation of bestiaries and lexicons, becoming an ‘informed amateur’ in niche domains⁴ – these offer crucial tools for wayfinding in ‘des territoires très transformés.’